I'm genuinely confused about if it only applies to people whom a Proper Court has Judged to be associated with specific Terrorist Groups, or if it applies to people of whom somebody says they're associated with specific terrorist groups, or something in between.
But if the justice is not involved in deciding whom this applies to, then there's no justice in applying it.
In my understanding the congress has a republican majority that has significant power in blocking him. So the best Obama can do now to further his own goals seems to try to be re-elected and to wait patiently until there's a democrat majority in congress.
The previous 1.5-2 ppm peaks would be just as invisible as the current one.
Even more so, the chart seems to have less high frequency noise the further back in time it goes. I wonder why. My initial guess is diffusion of stuff trapped in the ice.
The graph might also be an average from many ice cores, and the increasing difficulty of dating the samples accurately would cause more diffusion. Also it seems to me that the number of samples per time gets smaller towards more ancient times. Perhaps the scientists, being aware of the aging and diffusion problems, chose to take larger samples from deeper down. This might have allowed them a better resolution near the surface (as science also must obey the limits from finite resources..)
So, you're saying that there's no evidence of any problems.
The previous 1.5-2 ppm peaks would be just as invisible as the current one.
Only if the previous peaks were very short-lived. No reason to believe there ever were very narrow high peaks.
Also, whether or not it happened before is a moot point. Sure, mass extinctions happened before. We still have reasons not to have one more of those happen now.
No scientist, ever, anywhere, thinks that the Antarctic is going to melt completely. Ice mass and permafrost that happens to be in a sufficiently cold place (central Antarctic continent being the most obvious location) will stay frozen. The exact amount of permafrost today must necessarily be a delicate balance, so some warming must melt some permafrost (well, given that some landmass does exist at intermediate latitudes).
The increase of methane must be both the result, and a partial cause, of any warming. Causation can and does go both ways. No, it's not a runaway chain reaction, but it's a settling-to-some-new-balance, which might be disastrously different from the pre-industrial balence (for debatable values of "disastrous").
You're right, that's obviously nonsense. We don't have such data. Further, it's been suggested that the Permian Extinction, killing (up to) 96% of all marine species and 70% of terrestrial vertebrates, was caused by a sudden release of methane. So there's indication that large increases did happen before, although there's no way of telling how fast.
ATI once bricked my Radeon laptop by suddenly making drivers that can't draw a single pixel on the mobile 9600. Okay, so maybe it was a bug, but they weren't in a hurry to fix it. Yes, I could have installed an older driver, but because of Linux, that would have also meant installing an old distribution with an old kernel. I needed new features and programs. And even while the ATI driver initially worked, it didn't support everything (dual screen in particular was hacky).
I'd be very happy to see AMD make stable and feature-perfect drivers (consistently) for Linux. But given their very earned reputation and personal hardships with radeons, I'm not buying another ATI/AMD graphics card unless I see several years of flawless drivers from them (at least the kind of flawlessness that Nvidia offers).
So everybody "knows" that Nvidia is better for Linux, and not many people are left to find out if the drivers turn better. Too bad. They're in the grave they dug themselves.
When evidence doesn't fit the model, *fix* *the* *model*.
This doesn't make sense to me. If, when any contradictory data arises, you simply change the test conditions (the model), how is anyone ever to prove the hypothesis invalid? If you keep moving the goalpost by altering the model to better portray the conclusion you wish to see, how would an opponent find any contradiction? It seems to be the scientific equivalent of fudge factors. Couldn't someone who wants to see a different outcome just devise a new model with different fudge factors that portray an entirely different picture?
Well, suppose for a moment that Newton came up with F = A*m^3.4 - m^2 + B*ma - a^2 instead of F = ma. Then he made a few measurements to fix fudge factors A and B and to prove the equation. Someone else made other measurements and got some contradictory data. That invalidated Newton's original formula. Simple as that. Now, if Newton came up with another formula, they would start again. This time it might be the right one.
What hypothesis are you talking about? The greenhouse effect? Well, prove any of its parts invalid. You might prove that CO2 doesn't absorb EM radiation in the way we thought, or that it doesn't emit EM radiation in the way we thought, or that the Earth surface doesn't radiate heat the way we thought. But all these things are studied very much in the lab. The foundations are solid.
Prove anthropogenic greenhouse effect invalid? Simple, just prove that humans don't, after all, release CO2. Well..
Prove invalid the conclusion that the net effect of anthropogenic greenhouse effect is heating? Well, make very careful calculations about that and release the results amongst other scientists to see if they find errors in your logic. If they don't, then probably your study is valuable. This has indeed been done over and over again, and if one avoids deliberate fudge factors, the result always is that AGW is a fact.
Prove invalid the concept of computer models? Sorry. Computer models are nothing more than a way to make many calculations efficiently. So maybe you can go prove that mathematics is actually flawed. Good luck with that.
You could however prove invalid some specific numerical methods applied in the models. These have been studied in depth too, and people have found lots of ugly pitfalls, but these can be avoided. You could of course find out that some model falls into some pitfall, and thus the numerics are invalid.
Models are nothing more than a collection of equations of so-called "laws of nature", to see what the laws of nature mean in practice. They don't contain deliberate fudge factors. They do contain "parametrizations" - if something is not known from a law of nature, scientists go out and try to measure the value from the nature (or rather read studies from other scientists who have done that). These are questionable, but usually it's found that changing these values a bit doesn't effect the outcome very much.
The model is not the "test conditions". The model is a tool of calculation. Other calculations not done with models (but pen and paper) agree with the calculations using models. So, in short, one could prove model results invalid by showing 1) our understanding of laws of nature is mistaken, or 2) these laws are not applied properly in the models, or 3) the model result is caused by unrealistic assumptions.
I hope this answers the question although I'm not sure I understood it correctly.
100 years isn't very significant in geological time scales. But then, I don't care about the future of rocks, I care about the future of humankind (me included). That we're seeing a change of geological magnitudes in a time scale much shorter than geological time is worrying, not comforting.
Here is my delima. I don't understand how two well educated scientists can look at the exact same data and come up with two completely opposite results. How does that happen? My guess is that the wildcard is assumptions that are included in the models. Maybe a model with zero assumptions would help, but I doubt that is possible.
Does that happen? I have never seen this happen, given two well educated scientists who both work in their area of expertise. The "scientists" that I've heard come up with opposite results from climate data have not been climate scientists.
"They" were not predicting an ice age. Google it up. In 1975, there was a single lunatic predicting an ice age, while the scientific consensus thought quite otherwise. You're perpetuating a myth.
The sun's power output cannot explain why 1980-2010 was warmer than 1950-1980 or 1920-1950. It may play a part in why 2000-2010 didn't see a large trend.
We don't know the temperatures of other planets. What, we have one working thermometer on Mars? Even you can't seriously mean I can have one thermometer on Earth and deduce the mean temperature from that.
As I said, a good level of accuracy for short-term forecasts. Though any forecast more than 10 or 14 days ahead is mostly useless. It's a known accuracy.
Hm? We have a workable model of inputs and outputs. The inaccuracies in weather forecasts are mainly from two sources; the computational resolution is awful (aye, still something like 100 square kilometers lumped in to one value), and we're feeding rubbish into them. The latter is a subtle point. If we know the laws of physics and the state of some system, we can predict the future states of the system. However, we *don't* know the state of the atmosphere. Not now, not yesterday. This is the problem. It's equivalent to calculating the orbit of some asteroid, when we only know its location, velocity and mass very approximately.
Forecasting weather is like taking a group of teenagers and coming up with their supposed incomes 20 years later. Forecasting climate is like taking the group and coming up with the group's average income 20 years later. The latter problem is simpler.
Climate simulation is the same thing but much simpler..
I don't know why/. has this piece of truthieness. But its wrong. Climate vers weather modeling is *different*, not easier. For example both fields use ensembles of simulations. In fact for climate models simplified weather models are used for *tractability* reasons. It is a big complex set of PDE with many many variables, to claim that it is easier that weather prediction is to be quite clueless about the models. Both fields/models overlap quite a bit.
To say it's simpler is usually an attempt to explain the matter to laypersons, and also to counter the view that climate simulation should be necessarily harder than weather simulation.
One reason I personally think that climate is "easier" is that a realistic result, not too far from evidence or current state-of-the-art climate models, can be calculated by pen and paper doing analytical math about the greenhouse effect. Estimates of the possible impact of CO2 pollution have not changed very much in 100 years.
Of course the level of complexity of current research is exactly where the capabilities of scientists dictate, and this limit is pretty much the same for weather and climate;-).
For the number I found, they specifically said this is not the atmospheric lifetime of any single CO2 molecule (which would be shorter), but rather the duration of disturbance caused in total CO2 levels (and as such is the number we're interested in). For SO2, I didn't find a site being this specific, but as SO2 readily transforms into sulfuric acid in the atmosphere (and behaving as it does otherwise), I suspect CO2 has much more opportunities for feedbacks and everything.
In any case, burning fossil fuels - essentially digging up carbon-containing rocks and fluids from underground, and freeing the carbon into the atmosphere in CO2 - will increase the amount of carbon atoms in the circulation (atmospheric CO2 -> plant -> animal -> animal -> atmosphere and other cycles). These carbon atoms do not leave the circulation easily. Mainly by accumulation of organic material in swamps and on ocean floors, I think.
Image-googling for "historical co2 levels", one finds graphs that suggest that when CO2 levels go down, they go down at a steadyish pace of 20 ppm per million years. So maybe this is near the actual speed of accumulation of carbon? That's a guesstimate tho.
..regardless of which method the hairless apes select to justify controlling each other, every 75Kyears, where I'm sitting right now will be covered with two miles of ice alternating with a nice limestone producing inland sea.
WOAH! Which religion did that just come from?
Right, it has been covered by ice periodically in recent times. But only in recent millennia when there hasn't been much CO2 in the atmosphere. There have been very long periods without significant glaciation on Earth. CO2 levels are already much higher than ever before during recent glaciation events, and we might very well be in for another 250 million years without ice.
That's the key, see. Our emissions have already pushed the climate system of Earth beyond the boundaries of what it has been during the last few millions of years. The current ice age started 2.6 million years ago (with alternating glacials and interglacials), and it might be over in 1000 years. Before the current ice age there was 250 million years without glacial periods.
The effect also explains the lack of global temperature rise seen between 1940 and 1970
When the evidence doesn't fit the model, just come up with an excuse to dismiss the evidence. That's the grant-whoring scientific method at its finest.
When evidence doesn't fit the model, *fix* *the* *model*. The scientists have fixed the model, but still you're not happy!! The problem of their model: underestimation of sulfuric acid emissions from China. The new study shows that a model with more realistic SO2 pollution gives more realistic predictions. The scientists have not come up with an excuse, they have shown beyond reasonable doubt that Chinese SO2 emissions are *expected* to cause evidence to be what we see.
Parent is Sad, not funny. However can't rate it as such:(.
How anyone could not see that the last decade was warmer than previous decades is beyond me. Also it's rather evident from the data that between 2000 - 2010 there was not a strong trend.
Grand claims are needed (if you're referring to the claim "anthropogenic air pollution very probably results in significant warming of Earth's climate", which is pretty much the biggest claim scientists made). There's a reason to think that way, and that reason has been questioned by tens of thousands of capable minds over the course of decades. Intelligent humans would listen to the warning, and act even when the above is not completely certain. Nothing can ever be completely certain, but scientific results will always be the closest thing.
By the way, we *are* able to predict the weather to a known level of accuracy, which is also rather high for short-term forecasts. Climate simulation is the same thing but much simpler (because we don't care about where and when it will be what temperature, only the average), but of course more difficult because of other reasons. That said, there are many uncertainties, some so uncertain that no value is given, but their range *is* known. The possible ranges can be read in the IPCC documents from 2007. This-and-that effect cannot be bigger than some limit, and these values are quite trustworthy, because if some effect was HUGE, then it would necessarily also be evident. The sun's impact is actually pretty well known - the changes in power output have been much too small to account for detected changes.
The temperature measurement network isn't grand, but it's also not giving out random numbers. We know that. The numbers don't look random. The signal-to-noise ratio is big enough that we can use those numbers, and other effects are accounted for (right, some thermometers are next to asphalt, but guess what - asphalt warms up the ground, there's now more asphalt than 50 years ago, thus asphalt indeed contributes to global warming (I suppose these effects go under the label of "land use" in IPCC documents if you want to look it up)).
Scientists are sceptics and continue to be that. But this means more than just questioning findings. Turns out the scientists have long ago researched the problem of how good their results are, and the 2007 report was groundbreaking indeed because then, for the first time ever, scientists concluded their results are "very probably correct". And mind you, their result was that the humans cause warming in the range of 0.6 - 2.4 watts per square meter. Of course there's always a tradeoff between dependability and accuracy of some result, now the numbers add up such that scientists can very confidently say something that's very approximate, but still useful.
By the way, the biggest uncertainty in climate forecasts is the amount of pollution humans spew out in the future. How would they know that? They wouldn't. We might be able to cut pollution by 50% in 20 years, or we might quadruple it in the same time frame. No way to know.
'Reductions in carbon emissions will be more important as China installs scrubbers [on its coal-fired power stations], which reduce sulphur emissions,'
So basically never?
Well, the matter will become important with time. It goes like this: atmospheric lifetime for CO2 is estimated to be thousands of years, while numbers elsewhere on the web say this time is a few days for sulfur dioxide. That means that if, before humans, a volcano erupted releasing both CO2 and SO2, the SO2 levels would return to normal within days to weeks afterwards, but CO2 levels would remain elevated for thousands of years.
So, if one starts a new coal plant without scrubbers and thus introduces a steady flux of CO2 and SO2, the resulting increase in the SO2 level will stabilize within weeks, but CO2 level in the atmosphere will continue rising for as long as the plant operates. Thus, starting a new plant actually cools the climate at first, but eventually the CO2 emissions catch up and flip the balance. No scrubbers needed, although they can get rid of the cooling effect (and acid rain).
This sounds like a very plausible reason (amongst other things) why the last 10 years didn't see a strong trend of temperature increase.
Winter is not a problem for a large part of Earth's urban areas, and by what googling I could manage, Taiwan seems to be one of the luckier sites (although some sites say that the north part has seasonal variability). The deciduous trees could be wrapped up with led strings in the winter - this is what we do for christmas anyway - and there'd still be savings half of the year.
Also. Trees producing golden light! O Laurelin, o Telperion! It's the stuff of legends!
Slashdot Mirror
I'm genuinely confused about if it only applies to people whom a Proper Court has Judged to be associated with specific Terrorist Groups, or if it applies to people of whom somebody says they're associated with specific terrorist groups, or something in between.
But if the justice is not involved in deciding whom this applies to, then there's no justice in applying it.
You convinced me that no US citizen can be detained indefinitely in Guantanamo.
I'd be very happy to be convinced that US citizens can't be detained indefinitely elsewhere either.
In my understanding the congress has a republican majority that has significant power in blocking him. So the best Obama can do now to further his own goals seems to try to be re-elected and to wait patiently until there's a democrat majority in congress.
There's no reason to assume the past periodicity to continue. It's a different atmosphere now, it might also act differently.
Even more so, the chart seems to have less high frequency noise the further back in time it goes. I wonder why. My initial guess is diffusion of stuff trapped in the ice.
The graph might also be an average from many ice cores, and the increasing difficulty of dating the samples accurately would cause more diffusion. Also it seems to me that the number of samples per time gets smaller towards more ancient times. Perhaps the scientists, being aware of the aging and diffusion problems, chose to take larger samples from deeper down. This might have allowed them a better resolution near the surface (as science also must obey the limits from finite resources..)
So, you're saying that there's no evidence of any problems.
The previous 1.5-2 ppm peaks would be just as invisible as the current one.
Only if the previous peaks were very short-lived. No reason to believe there ever were very narrow high peaks.
Also, whether or not it happened before is a moot point. Sure, mass extinctions happened before. We still have reasons not to have one more of those happen now.
No scientist, ever, anywhere, thinks that the Antarctic is going to melt completely. Ice mass and permafrost that happens to be in a sufficiently cold place (central Antarctic continent being the most obvious location) will stay frozen. The exact amount of permafrost today must necessarily be a delicate balance, so some warming must melt some permafrost (well, given that some landmass does exist at intermediate latitudes).
The increase of methane must be both the result, and a partial cause, of any warming. Causation can and does go both ways. No, it's not a runaway chain reaction, but it's a settling-to-some-new-balance, which might be disastrously different from the pre-industrial balence (for debatable values of "disastrous").
You're right, that's obviously nonsense. We don't have such data. Further, it's been suggested that the Permian Extinction, killing (up to) 96% of all marine species and 70% of terrestrial vertebrates, was caused by a sudden release of methane. So there's indication that large increases did happen before, although there's no way of telling how fast.
ATI once bricked my Radeon laptop by suddenly making drivers that can't draw a single pixel on the mobile 9600. Okay, so maybe it was a bug, but they weren't in a hurry to fix it. Yes, I could have installed an older driver, but because of Linux, that would have also meant installing an old distribution with an old kernel. I needed new features and programs. And even while the ATI driver initially worked, it didn't support everything (dual screen in particular was hacky).
I'd be very happy to see AMD make stable and feature-perfect drivers (consistently) for Linux. But given their very earned reputation and personal hardships with radeons, I'm not buying another ATI/AMD graphics card unless I see several years of flawless drivers from them (at least the kind of flawlessness that Nvidia offers).
So everybody "knows" that Nvidia is better for Linux, and not many people are left to find out if the drivers turn better. Too bad. They're in the grave they dug themselves.
Fair enough ;-). While writing the above, I checked http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age#Major_ice_ages (especially the five million year graph), and a link similar to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_Earth's_atmosphere#Past_variation for past CO2, and remembering news like http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/may/12/climatechange.carbonemissions from a couple of years back. I'm confident that real science agrees as I hear compatible things from real scientists, but no time to dig up real scientific articles now, sorry.
This doesn't make sense to me. If, when any contradictory data arises, you simply change the test conditions (the model), how is anyone ever to prove the hypothesis invalid? If you keep moving the goalpost by altering the model to better portray the conclusion you wish to see, how would an opponent find any contradiction? It seems to be the scientific equivalent of fudge factors. Couldn't someone who wants to see a different outcome just devise a new model with different fudge factors that portray an entirely different picture?
Well, suppose for a moment that Newton came up with F = A*m^3.4 - m^2 + B*ma - a^2 instead of F = ma. Then he made a few measurements to fix fudge factors A and B and to prove the equation. Someone else made other measurements and got some contradictory data. That invalidated Newton's original formula. Simple as that. Now, if Newton came up with another formula, they would start again. This time it might be the right one.
What hypothesis are you talking about? The greenhouse effect? Well, prove any of its parts invalid. You might prove that CO2 doesn't absorb EM radiation in the way we thought, or that it doesn't emit EM radiation in the way we thought, or that the Earth surface doesn't radiate heat the way we thought. But all these things are studied very much in the lab. The foundations are solid.
Prove anthropogenic greenhouse effect invalid? Simple, just prove that humans don't, after all, release CO2. Well..
Prove invalid the conclusion that the net effect of anthropogenic greenhouse effect is heating? Well, make very careful calculations about that and release the results amongst other scientists to see if they find errors in your logic. If they don't, then probably your study is valuable. This has indeed been done over and over again, and if one avoids deliberate fudge factors, the result always is that AGW is a fact.
Prove invalid the concept of computer models? Sorry. Computer models are nothing more than a way to make many calculations efficiently. So maybe you can go prove that mathematics is actually flawed. Good luck with that.
You could however prove invalid some specific numerical methods applied in the models. These have been studied in depth too, and people have found lots of ugly pitfalls, but these can be avoided. You could of course find out that some model falls into some pitfall, and thus the numerics are invalid.
Models are nothing more than a collection of equations of so-called "laws of nature", to see what the laws of nature mean in practice. They don't contain deliberate fudge factors. They do contain "parametrizations" - if something is not known from a law of nature, scientists go out and try to measure the value from the nature (or rather read studies from other scientists who have done that). These are questionable, but usually it's found that changing these values a bit doesn't effect the outcome very much.
The model is not the "test conditions". The model is a tool of calculation. Other calculations not done with models (but pen and paper) agree with the calculations using models. So, in short, one could prove model results invalid by showing 1) our understanding of laws of nature is mistaken, or 2) these laws are not applied properly in the models, or 3) the model result is caused by unrealistic assumptions.
I hope this answers the question although I'm not sure I understood it correctly.
100 years isn't very significant in geological time scales. But then, I don't care about the future of rocks, I care about the future of humankind (me included). That we're seeing a change of geological magnitudes in a time scale much shorter than geological time is worrying, not comforting.
Here is my delima. I don't understand how two well educated scientists can look at the exact same data and come up with two completely opposite results. How does that happen? My guess is that the wildcard is assumptions that are included in the models. Maybe a model with zero assumptions would help, but I doubt that is possible.
Does that happen? I have never seen this happen, given two well educated scientists who both work in their area of expertise. The "scientists" that I've heard come up with opposite results from climate data have not been climate scientists.
"They" were not predicting an ice age. Google it up. In 1975, there was a single lunatic predicting an ice age, while the scientific consensus thought quite otherwise. You're perpetuating a myth.
The sun's power output cannot explain why 1980-2010 was warmer than 1950-1980 or 1920-1950. It may play a part in why 2000-2010 didn't see a large trend.
We don't know the temperatures of other planets. What, we have one working thermometer on Mars? Even you can't seriously mean I can have one thermometer on Earth and deduce the mean temperature from that.
As I said, a good level of accuracy for short-term forecasts. Though any forecast more than 10 or 14 days ahead is mostly useless. It's a known accuracy.
Hm? We have a workable model of inputs and outputs. The inaccuracies in weather forecasts are mainly from two sources; the computational resolution is awful (aye, still something like 100 square kilometers lumped in to one value), and we're feeding rubbish into them. The latter is a subtle point. If we know the laws of physics and the state of some system, we can predict the future states of the system. However, we *don't* know the state of the atmosphere. Not now, not yesterday. This is the problem. It's equivalent to calculating the orbit of some asteroid, when we only know its location, velocity and mass very approximately.
Forecasting weather is like taking a group of teenagers and coming up with their supposed incomes 20 years later. Forecasting climate is like taking the group and coming up with the group's average income 20 years later. The latter problem is simpler.
Climate simulation is the same thing but much simpler..
I don't know why /. has this piece of truthieness. But its wrong. Climate vers weather modeling is *different*, not easier. For example both fields use ensembles of simulations. In fact for climate models simplified weather models are used for *tractability* reasons. It is a big complex set of PDE with many many variables, to claim that it is easier that weather prediction is to be quite clueless about the models. Both fields/models overlap quite a bit.
To say it's simpler is usually an attempt to explain the matter to laypersons, and also to counter the view that climate simulation should be necessarily harder than weather simulation.
One reason I personally think that climate is "easier" is that a realistic result, not too far from evidence or current state-of-the-art climate models, can be calculated by pen and paper doing analytical math about the greenhouse effect. Estimates of the possible impact of CO2 pollution have not changed very much in 100 years.
Of course the level of complexity of current research is exactly where the capabilities of scientists dictate, and this limit is pretty much the same for weather and climate ;-).
For the number I found, they specifically said this is not the atmospheric lifetime of any single CO2 molecule (which would be shorter), but rather the duration of disturbance caused in total CO2 levels (and as such is the number we're interested in). For SO2, I didn't find a site being this specific, but as SO2 readily transforms into sulfuric acid in the atmosphere (and behaving as it does otherwise), I suspect CO2 has much more opportunities for feedbacks and everything.
In any case, burning fossil fuels - essentially digging up carbon-containing rocks and fluids from underground, and freeing the carbon into the atmosphere in CO2 - will increase the amount of carbon atoms in the circulation (atmospheric CO2 -> plant -> animal -> animal -> atmosphere and other cycles). These carbon atoms do not leave the circulation easily. Mainly by accumulation of organic material in swamps and on ocean floors, I think.
Image-googling for "historical co2 levels", one finds graphs that suggest that when CO2 levels go down, they go down at a steadyish pace of 20 ppm per million years. So maybe this is near the actual speed of accumulation of carbon? That's a guesstimate tho.
Right. Proper climate science works with periods of at least 30 years, preferably 100. These show a hefty upward trend.
..regardless of which method the hairless apes select to justify controlling each other, every 75Kyears, where I'm sitting right now will be covered with two miles of ice alternating with a nice limestone producing inland sea.
WOAH! Which religion did that just come from?
Right, it has been covered by ice periodically in recent times. But only in recent millennia when there hasn't been much CO2 in the atmosphere. There have been very long periods without significant glaciation on Earth. CO2 levels are already much higher than ever before during recent glaciation events, and we might very well be in for another 250 million years without ice.
That's the key, see. Our emissions have already pushed the climate system of Earth beyond the boundaries of what it has been during the last few millions of years. The current ice age started 2.6 million years ago (with alternating glacials and interglacials), and it might be over in 1000 years. Before the current ice age there was 250 million years without glacial periods.
The effect also explains the lack of global temperature rise seen between 1940 and 1970
When the evidence doesn't fit the model, just come up with an excuse to dismiss the evidence. That's the grant-whoring scientific method at its finest.
When evidence doesn't fit the model, *fix* *the* *model*. The scientists have fixed the model, but still you're not happy!! The problem of their model: underestimation of sulfuric acid emissions from China. The new study shows that a model with more realistic SO2 pollution gives more realistic predictions. The scientists have not come up with an excuse, they have shown beyond reasonable doubt that Chinese SO2 emissions are *expected* to cause evidence to be what we see.
Parent is Sad, not funny. However can't rate it as such :(.
How anyone could not see that the last decade was warmer than previous decades is beyond me. Also it's rather evident from the data that between 2000 - 2010 there was not a strong trend.
Grand claims are needed (if you're referring to the claim "anthropogenic air pollution very probably results in significant warming of Earth's climate", which is pretty much the biggest claim scientists made). There's a reason to think that way, and that reason has been questioned by tens of thousands of capable minds over the course of decades. Intelligent humans would listen to the warning, and act even when the above is not completely certain. Nothing can ever be completely certain, but scientific results will always be the closest thing.
By the way, we *are* able to predict the weather to a known level of accuracy, which is also rather high for short-term forecasts. Climate simulation is the same thing but much simpler (because we don't care about where and when it will be what temperature, only the average), but of course more difficult because of other reasons. That said, there are many uncertainties, some so uncertain that no value is given, but their range *is* known. The possible ranges can be read in the IPCC documents from 2007. This-and-that effect cannot be bigger than some limit, and these values are quite trustworthy, because if some effect was HUGE, then it would necessarily also be evident. The sun's impact is actually pretty well known - the changes in power output have been much too small to account for detected changes.
The temperature measurement network isn't grand, but it's also not giving out random numbers. We know that. The numbers don't look random. The signal-to-noise ratio is big enough that we can use those numbers, and other effects are accounted for (right, some thermometers are next to asphalt, but guess what - asphalt warms up the ground, there's now more asphalt than 50 years ago, thus asphalt indeed contributes to global warming (I suppose these effects go under the label of "land use" in IPCC documents if you want to look it up)).
Scientists are sceptics and continue to be that. But this means more than just questioning findings. Turns out the scientists have long ago researched the problem of how good their results are, and the 2007 report was groundbreaking indeed because then, for the first time ever, scientists concluded their results are "very probably correct". And mind you, their result was that the humans cause warming in the range of 0.6 - 2.4 watts per square meter. Of course there's always a tradeoff between dependability and accuracy of some result, now the numbers add up such that scientists can very confidently say something that's very approximate, but still useful.
By the way, the biggest uncertainty in climate forecasts is the amount of pollution humans spew out in the future. How would they know that? They wouldn't. We might be able to cut pollution by 50% in 20 years, or we might quadruple it in the same time frame. No way to know.
'Reductions in carbon emissions will be more important as China installs scrubbers [on its coal-fired power stations], which reduce sulphur emissions,'
So basically never?
Well, the matter will become important with time. It goes like this: atmospheric lifetime for CO2 is estimated to be thousands of years, while numbers elsewhere on the web say this time is a few days for sulfur dioxide. That means that if, before humans, a volcano erupted releasing both CO2 and SO2, the SO2 levels would return to normal within days to weeks afterwards, but CO2 levels would remain elevated for thousands of years.
So, if one starts a new coal plant without scrubbers and thus introduces a steady flux of CO2 and SO2, the resulting increase in the SO2 level will stabilize within weeks, but CO2 level in the atmosphere will continue rising for as long as the plant operates. Thus, starting a new plant actually cools the climate at first, but eventually the CO2 emissions catch up and flip the balance. No scrubbers needed, although they can get rid of the cooling effect (and acid rain).
This sounds like a very plausible reason (amongst other things) why the last 10 years didn't see a strong trend of temperature increase.
Do you actually think that anything that comes from numerical simulations is bullshit? Why?
Winter is not a problem for a large part of Earth's urban areas, and by what googling I could manage, Taiwan seems to be one of the luckier sites (although some sites say that the north part has seasonal variability). The deciduous trees could be wrapped up with led strings in the winter - this is what we do for christmas anyway - and there'd still be savings half of the year.
Also. Trees producing golden light! O Laurelin, o Telperion! It's the stuff of legends!